review

This was a quick and tasty dinner that was quite easy to put together. The recipe comes from a little book of Rachel Ray recipes. Despite the fact that I find her annoying as a TV personality, she makes some good food. This book is also the source of my turkey chili. I haven’t made a lot of the things in it, but what I have made has turned out well and been quite good. I came across the recipe will trolling through the indexes of my smaller cookbooks, looking for inspiration. I tend to cook primarily from recipes I find online, and treat my cookbook collection more as a reference tool. This was a great reminder that I need to make more use of them!

In this particular case, I did make a significant modification of the recipe, which is actually called Quick Tagine-Style Chicken with Couscous. I feel like I’ve been eating a lot of meat lately, and I wanted to make this vegetarian. So, I subbed in some tofu and I think it worked out quite well. Below is the modified recipe; if you want to do chicken you would just start by browning 1 3/4 lbs. of cubed chicken breast.

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This is the second casserole I made from the January 2010 Vegetarian Times. This one I made to take to a meeting/party, and so I doubled it. One thing I was reminded of is the magic of baking something like this, which changes and improves the flavor — I tasted the individual components as I went, and found that I was not that impressed. In the end, people said they liked it and it did taste pretty good. I should note that I omitted the beans, mainly because I forgot to prep some (I do beans from dried) and didn’t have time to do it when I was actually making the casserole. I should also note that I didn’t have any wine on hand, so I used vegetable broth. Lastly, I subbed dried herbs for fresh, which might also have affected the final flavor. I also think that the bottom filling needs something else — somehow the lovely flavor of the leeks that I expected didn’t come through. Mine were about a week old by the time I used them, but they seemed fine, so I’m not sure if that’s the problem or if it’s in the combination of flavors (maybe increase the leeks and decrease the onions?). Overall I didn’t dislike this, but I’m not sure I’ll make it again. It will probably depend on whether I come up with any good ideas for modifying it and improving the flavor. (Ideas?) Regardless, I think this is definitely a side dish and not a meal in and of itself, whether or not you include the beans.

As I made this recipe, it struck me why people say that they can’t cook, even when they follow the recipe as written. Some recipes just aren’t written that well, and this was one of them. The proportions seemed a bit off (made me glad I’d grabbed an extra sweet potato just for the heck of it) — as written, you wouldn’t have very much sweet potato topping to work with. In the magazine, the recipe calls for “1 medium sweet potato (1/4 lb).” I found that the smallest ones at my grocery store were 1/2″ lb., so I’m guessing that the author didn’t actually weigh the potato, but perhaps just guessed after the fact. This recipe also didn’t include an instruction to preheat the oven at the start, which I’m sure will cause problems for some cooks.
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I have been cooking a lot in the last couple of weeks, but haven’t managed to post about the recipes in a timely fashion. I’m going to try and write up most of the posts today, and set them to post here and there over the next week or so.

This was the first of two casseroles I made right after the holidays, both from an article in the January 2010 Vegetarian Times, which I picked up while at home. All of them are designed to freeze well.

This casserole is pretty straightforward — you make a whole wheat pie crust to cover the top, and a samosa-style filling. The flavors weren’t as intense as getting a samosa at an Indian restaurant, but I expected that given that I was making it at home. Next time around I might increase the spices.

I also found that the crust was rather tough, probably due to one of the following: I modified the crust recipe to use butter instead of vegetable oil since I was out,  I used regular whole wheat flour instead of whole wheat pastry flour (I’m assuming there’s a difference since it was specified), I might have over processed the dough, and I overbaked the casserole by accidentally following the “from frozen” baking time rather than the fresh-made.

I’ll definitely make this again. Next time, I’ll make a point of being sure that I have chickpeas on hand, so I can make some kind of side dish that will turn this into a more complete meal.
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